Netherlands surprised at Obama tax haven slur

The Dutch embassy in Washington has expressed surprise at president Barack
Obama's qualification of the Netherlands as a tax haven.

Obama on Monday presented a series of proposals aimed at curbing the tax
benefits enjoyed by companies and wealthy individuals harboring cash in
offshore accounts, including in the Netherlands.

US multinational corporations in 2004 paid only 16 billion dollars in US taxes
on 700 billion dollars in foreign earnings. Obama didn't name the
Netherlands in his speech, but a fact sheet distributed to journalists said
nearly one-third of all foreign profits reported by such corporations in
2003 came from three low-tax countries: Bermuda, Ireland and the
Netherlands.

In a reaction to the US media, the Dutch embassy in Washington said it was
surprised that the White House should qualify Netherlands as a low-tax
country.

"This is factually not correct," the statement said. "Dutch
corporate taxation is fully transparent and the rate is 25.5 percent, which
puts us in the medium-tax rate category and not in the low-tax category."

It also said the Netherlands is working together with the US - also in a G20
framework - in dealing with countries that have bank secrecy or are
non-transparent. "The Netherlands shares tax-related information with
the US without reservation," the statement said.

The White House wants to collect 210 billion dollars over the next ten years
by fixing what Obama called a "broken tax system". Multinationals,
he said, pay an average tax rate of just 2 percent on their foreign
revenues.